Hall of Secrets (A Benedict Hall Novel) (16 page)

“No,” Allison said. “Not at all. I’ve done it for Mother. We held one of the debutante teas in our house.”

“That’s wonderful,” Margot said. “I wouldn’t have the first idea how to begin. I’m grateful to you.”

“It’s fine,” Allison said.

“Good. That’s good.”

Allison’s eyes flicked away to the window that looked out over Elliott Bay, and her lips worked as if she were about to say something more, but changed her mind.

“As I said a few nights ago, Allison,” Margot began, “I think at your age you should understand how pregnancies happen. It’s the sort of thing I would expect your mother to teach you, though I’m aware mothers often don’t.”

“My mother doesn’t talk about things like that.” A pause. “Did yours?”

Margot sighed. “Well, yes. She didn’t like doing it, though. She was embarrassed, and got through it as quickly as she could.” She smiled a little, remembering. “For women of their generation—your mother’s and mine—it’s a difficult thing to talk about. But we’re modern women, you and I.”

Allison sat up a bit straighter. “You’re talking about sex, aren’t you, Cousin Margot?”

“Yes. I am.”

“And that Mrs. Sanger—is that what she’s teaching people about? Sex?”

Margot nodded. The girl wasn’t completely ignorant, thank God. She had met pregnant girls who had no idea how they had gotten that way, and others who thought their babies were going to be born through their navels. “Did you understand much of our conversation last night? About Mrs. Sanger?”

“Not really. I’m sorry.”

“There’s no need for that,” Margot said with warmth. “I just wish it would be a normal part of girls’ education, so they know how to take care of themselves.” She leaned down to open a drawer in her beautiful new desk and pulled out a pamphlet. “This,” she told Allison, “I’m allowed to give you, because I’m a physician. No one else is, because it’s considered obscene, but—”

“Obscene?” Allison said faintly.

“Afraid so. I hope you’ll believe me when I say it’s not.”

“My mother says having a baby is messy. And hurts worse than anything you can imagine.”

“Yet women go on having them,” Margot said. “Just as they have for thousands of years.” She pushed the pamphlet across her desk, and Allison picked it up gingerly, as if it might stain her fingers. “Bodies,” Margot said with as much patience as she could muster, “tend to be messy, if you’re sensitive to such things. Childbirth has some pain associated with it, but you can trust me, Allison, I’ve seen things that hurt far worse. And most of the mothers I’ve attended are so thrilled to see their little ones safely born that they would do it all again in a heartbeat.”

“Not my mother.” This was said flatly, without the slightest doubt.

“Are you sure about that?” Margot asked.

“Oh, yes.” Allison picked up the pamphlet and folded it in half. “Yes, I’m quite sure.”

“I think often parents and children don’t understand each other. Uncle Henry was quite worried about you—”

Allison interrupted. “No, he wasn’t, believe me. He was worried he wouldn’t be able to sell me.”

“Sell—?” Margot said helplessly.

Allison’s features, usually soft and vulnerable looking, hardened, and her little pointed chin seemed to grow sharper as her lips pulled down. “Oh, yes,” she said. “I’m on the market, you know. The marriage market.” She spread her arms wide, and her small body seemed to suddenly thrum with resentment. She reminded Margot of a teapot starting to whistle. Suddenly, she was talking, words pouring out of her like steam.

“Oh, yes. The only thing Papa ever liked about me was my tennis game. I’ve always been Mother’s problem, in his view. It’s like a horse being groomed for auction, you know, the whole debutante thing. No young men are allowed at any of the events unless they have a pedigree, and all of us are paraded in front of them so they can make their choice. Everyone knows how much money you have, and what property is in your family, and—and they know your family history, too, which is why Mother and Papa were so worried I would make a mistake, because they’re not proud of theirs.”

Her cheeks were flaming red now, and her blue eyes sparkled with temper. “Your family is different, because Uncle Dickson has been successful for such a long time, and you have Benedict Hall and Cousin Dick in the business, but Papa—” Her energy evaporated, all at once, and the stream of her words sputtered and died. Her hands fluttered down into her lap like exhausted birds.

It took Margot a moment to think of how to go forward. The outburst both surprised her and, in some odd way, encouraged her. There was spirit in the girl, and that could only be a good thing. She said, choosing her words with care, “Allison, I don’t think I understand the concern about your family’s history. I believe your father is quite successful. Father has never intimated anything otherwise.” She remembered that Dickson had worried about Henry’s business not being diversified in the current economic climate, but this was not the time to mention it. “Are they really in a hurry for you to be married?”

“Oh, yes. Papa wants me off his hands. The expense, and everything, you know.”

“Surely your family doesn’t lack for money.”

“It’s never enough,” Allison said. “That’s what Mother says, in any case.”

“Hmm. I suppose I don’t know Aunt Adelaide very well.”

Allison sat back in the armchair with a weary look on her young face. “You don’t want to, Cousin Margot. My mother’s a shark. She’ll eat you up if you’re not careful.”

 

It had been, Margot thought, an odd visit. She walked Allison out to meet Blake, and stood watching, her hands in the pockets of her coat, as they drove off. The day was one of those cold, glittering ones, with icy sunshine glancing off the new bricks and paint of the clinic, and making a shining backdrop of the Sound and the snowy Olympic Mountains. Margot stood where she was for a short time to admire the view and savor the feeling of having created something fine.

Frank was partial to native plants, and he and the gardener had decided on a barrier of Pacific wax myrtle to ensure privacy at the back of the building. The hedge was small still, and looked a bit dilapidated in the cold. Margot walked around the side of the clinic, past her office window, to take a closer look so she could describe it to him in her next letter.

She touched the glossy, elongated leaves and pushed at the dirt of the bed with her foot. It seemed healthy to her, though she was no expert. They had planted six of them, and in years to come, the gardener and Frank assured her, the hedge would make a nice screen that would keep down some of the traffic noise. She crouched beside one of the plants and pulled one small, fragrant leaf from a low stem. It was a bit silly, perhaps, but she liked the idea of sending it to Frank. When he opened the envelope, it would slide out, a little bit of Seattle for him to hold in his palm.

She dropped the leaf into the pocket of her coat and walked around to the other side of the clinic, where the smaller windows of the two examination rooms faced north. That side lay in shadow now, the low angle of the sun falling below the roofline. Margot trailed her fingers along the wall, remembering the day when she and Frank had stood here, surveying the newly poured concrete footings. The day had been hot and clear, the sun burning their shoulders, pouring generously over the wet concrete. Today the air smelled of salt and smoke. That day it had been filled with the scents of raw earth and newly sawn wood, smells that would always remind her of the day she knew Frank Parrish loved her.

She had not, officially, accepted Frank’s proposal that day. They had walked together down to the Public Market, and he had bought her an embarrassingly large bouquet of flowers from the Chinese flower seller. Somehow, though, the actual proposal got lost in the excitement, in the thrill of his new prosthetic, in their plans for the clinic. It was her fault, of course. She hadn’t been all that sure she wanted to be a wife. Anyone’s wife.

In fact, she still wasn’t sure of that, but it didn’t mean she didn’t love Frank with all her heart. She had asked him once why they needed to be married, and his answer had been clear and succinct. He wouldn’t ruin her reputation by not marrying her. He wouldn’t ruin his own by living with someone not his wife. He wanted, he said, what his parents had. What
her
parents had.

A sudden shiver broke her revery. The shadows were too cold to linger in. She turned back toward the street and the front entrance, but at the corner she stopped.

Another memory, that of crouching down beside the fresh, uncured concrete to push the sapphire—Preston’s sapphire—down into its gray, wet depths. She had watched the silver chain coil after it until it, too, sank and disappeared. Frank had said something about its value, but Margot had wanted only to get rid of it, to put it somewhere where no one would find it again.

The creeping Jenny starts the gardener had planted to cover the foundation were slow to spread. They grew in little clumps, their leaves stiff with cold and generously threaded with brown stems, and there were large spaces between them. In one of those spaces Margot saw a bubble in the concrete. It wasn’t large, but it was definite, the only flaw in the otherwise smooth side of the foundation.

The chill that had made her shiver crept deeper. It settled in her chest, a familiar sense of dread she thought she had banished more than a year before.

She crouched down beside the flaw in the concrete, knelt in the exact spot she had on that sunny autumn day, before there had been walls or floors or windows in the building. She prodded the bubble with her fingers, but it was dry and hard and very cold. A sudden prickle on the back of her neck brought her to her feet. It had nothing to do with the cold and the shadows of the building. She had learned long ago, when she was still a small girl, to be aware of that prickling. She had learned the hard way that it was never wise to ignore it.

Now, though there should be no more danger, and nothing further to worry about, she spun to see who was watching.

There, was that a shadow, slipping between the shoemaker’s and the Italian grocer’s? The alley there was narrow, just a dirt lane where the businesses left their refuse and piled empty delivery cartons. Margot took a step, thinking if she hurried, she might reach the alley before whoever it was had disappeared.

“Dr. Benedict?” It was Angela Rossi, standing on the little stoop. She had taken off her apron and wore her cape over her long woolen skirt. Her handbag sat at her feet as she pulled on her gloves.

“Oh, Nurse Rossi. I kept you waiting. It turned out to be an interesting day, didn’t it?”

Angela smiled cheerfully. “It was wonderful, Doctor! Real patients and all.”

“I’m glad you didn’t mind. I didn’t expect to be working so much before we’re officially open.”

“I’ve left the ledger open on the desk so you can check it. The money is in the lockbox, in the big drawer.”

Margot, anxiety forgotten in delight at this development, exclaimed, “Money! I can hardly believe it. Just a year ago, I could see this many patients in a day and not see a penny in actual income.”

Angela bent to pick up her handbag. “Times are better, I suppose.”

“Perhaps that’s it.” Margot went up the walk and put her hand on the latch. “I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

“I’ll be here!”

Margot watched the young nurse tripping energetically along Post Street toward the streetcar stop, her cape fluttering around her sturdy black-stockinged legs. Rossi was proving, at least so far, to be everything Alice Cardwell had promised. She was hardworking, eager to learn, direct but kind with the patients, and deft with bandages. She would work out very well. Margot couldn’t wait to tell Frank all about her.

She went back into the clinic for her own coat and hat, but as she passed the desk she took a swift peek into the cash box. She had put in some money, so the nurse could make change if need be. There had been five dollars in the box when she opened it that morning. Now, at a glance, she guessed there must be nine there, including two paper ones. She shook her head in wonderment at these riches as she shrugged into her coat and put on her hat.

It wasn’t until she had gone around to put out the lights, and was locking the door, that she remembered that strange bubble on the side of the foundation. It was as if the sapphire, that object Preston had cared about so much, and which he had held as he died, was trying to emerge from its tomb.

She turned the key and dropped her key ring into the pocket of her coat. As she pulled the collar up against the cold, she told herself not to behave like a superstitious child. She stamped down the brick walk, impatient with the strange thoughts and impressions that had confused the final hours of what had otherwise been a most satisfying day.

She glanced up, and the smile returned to her face. Blake was there, just as he used to be. The Essex gleamed through the darkness, its headlamps lighting her way. Blake touched his cap as she walked toward him. “Good evening, Dr. Margot,” he said, and there wasn’t a trace of a Southern accent in his deep voice. “I trust you had a good day.”

“Good evening, Blake,” she said. “It was a wonderful day.”

“Very good,” he said calmly, as he held the door for her. “Very good.”

C
HAPTER
14

The alley was wet, and his shoes were heavy with cold mud by the time he slunk away from Post Street and down to Elliott Avenue. It seemed impossible that just two years before he had walked these streets proudly. Girls, like the pretty cousin who had driven off with Blake, used to turn their heads when he passed. They blushed with pleasure when he tipped his hat to them, and he often felt their eyes on him as he strode away, his head up, his back straight, a man without a care in the world. He had welcomed the sunshine on his neck, had removed his hat to feel the wind in his hair. He had gone into any establishment he wished, always welcome for his name, his status, and in no small part for his good looks. That life was gone now, lost forever.

She had won. She had destroyed him. If it hadn’t been for Margot, he wouldn’t be creeping through alleys, sheltering in shadows. She wasn’t clever enough, despite what Father thought, to have effected this damage deliberately, but it was no less devastating for that. Now, if a woman caught a glimpse of him on the street, she averted her eyes. If he was careless enough to let his hat brim lift in the breeze or his muffler slide down his neck, children whimpered and buried their faces in their mothers’ skirts. Men who caught sight of him winced with sympathy. They probably thought he bore the scars of the Great War, but their pity didn’t lessen the revulsion they felt for his ruined face.

Indeed, he felt it himself.

The Compass Center, where he had been sleeping for months, had mirrors in the bathrooms. Rev. Karlstrom said they were so the men could shave and make themselves presentable before they went out looking for work. Mrs. Karlstrom—who at least didn’t avert her eyes at the sight of him—advised him to accept his disability as part of God’s grace. God! If there were a God, none of this would have happened. If there were a God watching over him, he could have grown up without having to fight
her
for every inch of ground. If there were a God who gave a tinker’s damn about him, he would have held his rightful place as the adored son of a fine family. He could have gone on at the
Times,
writing his column, making his mother proud, acquiring a greater and greater readership that would eventually win even his father’s respect.

He hated being at the Center, but he had no other place to sleep. He tolerated the sermons and the lectures, accepted the hand-me-down clothes, pretended humility and gratitude. The mirrors, however—reminding him every time he had to piss that his face had become monstrous—were too much. He had taken care of them. He had no choice, really.

There were plenty of discarded bricks lying around on the streets in Pioneer Square, and it was an easy matter to slip one under the coat they had given him, the coat that didn’t fit and probably had belonged to some repulsive old man. He had carried the brick into the bathroom and made short work of the three mirrors hanging there. He didn’t need to look at his scars every day. He could hardly forget how they looked. He had only to show his face on the street to be reminded, and in the most unpleasant way. It was only fair that, in the place he was forced to live, he didn’t have to see them several times a day.

The Karlstroms, naturally, never knew who had smashed the mirrors into gleaming splinters. He might look like a monster, but was still good at getting things done.

He would get this done, too, and do a proper job of it this time. He had made an uncharacteristic error the last time, confused by Parrish’s presence, by the strangeness of Margot and Frank being at the clinic late at night, by a patient being there when the clinic should have been closed. And he had been betrayed by the sapphire, in which he had placed so much trust. More evidence there was no God. And no justice except that which a man achieved for himself.

This time he would be more subtle. This time he would use a scalpel instead of a pickax. He had remembered, at last, who the girl was living in Benedict Hall. Allison Benedict, little San Francisco cousin, the debutante. A pretty plum, ripe for plucking. She was just the tool he needed.

Of course his own life was over, and he’d be glad to be shut of it. There was nothing left for him but that achievement of justice, that balancing of accounts. Then he would be finished, and be damned to them all.

 

Allison waved farewell to Blake as he backed and turned the Essex to drive downtown to fetch Margot. He rewarded her with one of his generous smiles, a lovely flash of white in his dark face. She walked slowly up the steps to the front door, thinking about Blake, about Cousin Margot, about how different things were here from her expectations. Margot wasn’t the enemy at all. She was—she was everything Allison wished she could be herself. Smart. Educated. Capable. No one, as nearly as Allison could tell, judged Margot by her appearance. They cared about who she was and what she could do.

The man with the bloody handkerchief had walked out neatly bandaged, all put together again, politely thanking the doctor and the nurse. How marvelous must it be to be able to fix things that way! Nurse Rossi was neither pretty nor particularly well spoken, as Adelaide would have hastened to point out, but like Cousin Margot, she was doing work that mattered.

The front door was unlocked. Allison let herself in to stand for a moment in the front hall, listening. It was still too early for the twins to be setting the table in the dining room. She could hear their light voices upstairs, above her head. The men had not yet returned from the office, and there was no sign of Cousin Ramona or Aunt Edith. The only sounds came from the kitchen, Hattie’s rich voice humming as she clattered pans and walked this way and that in the kitchen, the floor creaking beneath her weight.

Allison hung up her coat and hat, then crossed the hall to knock on the kitchen door. The humming broke off, and a moment later, Hattie peeked out. She was drying her hands on her apron as she pushed the door open with her shoulder. “Why, Miss Allison! You were gone most of the afternoon, weren’t you? Would you like a snack? A cup of tea?”

“Just a cup of tea would be nice.”

“You go on in the small parlor, and I’ll bring it.”

“Hattie, really, I—I’d just as soon have it in the kitchen, if you don’t mind. I need to talk to you.”

Hattie paused, her apron caught up in her hands, a doubtful expression tugging at her plump features. “Talk to me? Is something wrong, miss?”

“Oh, no!” Allison smiled, and Hattie, after a second’s pause, smiled tentatively back. “I just wanted to talk to you about Cousin Margot’s tea. I know you’re busy, but it seemed like a good time.”

Hattie’s smile widened. “Why, Miss Allison, of course.” She smoothed down the folds of her apron and stepped back to pull the door open. “You’re welcome in old Hattie’s kitchen just any old time. I always liked the young ones coming in to have a cookie or cup of cocoa. It’s been an awful long while, now they’re all grown.”

Allison was familiar with the kitchen in her own home. As a child, she had taken her meals there with Rosy, and later, before she came out, when her parents were entertaining. The San Francisco kitchen was dark, set beneath ground level and, like the rest of the house, narrow. This one seemed enormous in contrast, a long, bright room. A shining nickel-plated range sat on one side, and a tall white icebox on the other. The ceiling was high, and cloudy now with fragrant steam from a large bubbling stockpot. Something was baking in the oven, something that smelled of sugar and butter and vanilla. Allison’s mouth watered suddenly.

Hattie walked to the sink to fill the teakettle, then walked back to put it on the range. “Set yourself down, Miss Allison.” Allison slipped into one of the chrome-backed straight chairs arranged around a long table with a white enamel top. Hattie put a teacup and saucer in front of her, and then, as if she had forgotten—or ignored—Allison’s refusal of the snack, she dipped her hand into a fat pottery cookie jar flanking a percolator. She set a plate of cookies beside the teacup. Now, as the kettle began to whistle, Allison picked up a cookie. It was every bit as sweet and rich as she had imagined, and her eyes closed with pleasure as the crumbs melted on her tongue. When she opened them, Hattie was grinning at her. “Lordy, I do like to see a child eat,” she said with satisfaction. “Those snickerdoodles used to be the children’s favorites. Now, here’s your tea. Have another cookie, and tell me how I can help with Miss Margot’s party.”

Allison took a second cookie. She was afraid of bolting it, of gorging herself, as she had done at the diner with Tommy. The tea helped, though. She sipped it, and nibbled the cookie, and found she felt all right. Her stomach didn’t feel desperate, and she felt at ease here under Hattie’s approving eye.

A little swell of contentment rolled over her, a gentle, warm wave that made her smile. “I thought we’d put a table in the reception room,” she told Hattie. “We can put the refreshments there, and you could do some cookies and finger sandwiches. If it’s not too much trouble.”

Hattie, who had crossed to the range to stir what was in the pot, said, “It’s no trouble at all, Miss Allison, no trouble at all. So sweet of you to do all this! I’m sure Miss Margot is real happy to have you help.”

“These cookies would be perfect, because they’re small. People will be walking around with napkins, I think.”

Hattie nodded agreement. She crossed to the table and lowered herself into a chair with a little grunt. “Hope you don’t mind if I get off my feet a moment, miss.”

Allison blinked. “Hattie! This is
your
kitchen. Why would I mind?”

“Well,” Hattie said, fanning herself with the hem of her apron, “we do like to do things proper here at Benedict Hall.”

Allison sipped tea and watched Hattie over the rim of her cup. The cook wasn’t as old as she had first thought. Her forehead was smooth, and the skin of her round cheeks was glossy and plump. It was her eyes that had made her seem older, not wrinkles around them, but the set of the eyelids and the expression they held. Allison said impulsively, “I love the way you do things, Hattie. I mean, here in Benedict Hall.”

Hattie made a little one-handed gesture. “Oh, well, Miss Allison, this is a good house. It always has been, until—well, until—” Her eyes suddenly reddened, and she looked away.

Allison said quietly, “I know. Until Cousin Preston died. I’m so sorry.”

Hattie sniffed and dashed a hand across her eyes, as if the gesture could erase her ready tears. “You’re a sweet girl, Miss Allison. You’re being real sweet to old Hattie.”

Allison knew her mother would have been appalled to see her sitting in the kitchen with a colored cook, having a conversation as if they were equals. But why should that be? In what possible way did a girl like herself—who didn’t do anything but buy clothes and go to parties—bring more to the world than Hattie?

She said, with real melancholy, “I’m not a sweet girl, though. I’m a handful. That’s what Papa says.”

Hattie put one hand flat on the table and looked directly into Allison’s eyes. “All I know is what I see,” she said. She wasn’t smiling now, and her eyes still glistened with the tears she hadn’t shed. “I see a pretty girl being nice to an old servant and offering to help her cousin with a party. Nobody gonna tell me that girl is a handful.”

“Oh, Hattie,” Allison breathed. Tears started behind her own eyes, and for some reason that made her laugh. “Oh, Hattie,” she said again, giggling and sobbing at the same time. “You just don’t know what I’ve done!”

Hattie chuckled, too. “Well, you ain’t killed anybody, I’m guessing, and you ain’t got yourself in trouble. You’re a good girl in my book, Miss Allison!”

Allison was laughing in earnest now at Hattie’s frankness and at her kindness. “My mother,” she sputtered, “would absolutely burst with fury if she heard you say that!”

Hattie’s grin was wide and accepting. It felt marvelous to laugh with someone, and Allison didn’t care that it was a servant. The fact that her mother wouldn’t like it gave her all the more reason to enjoy it.

Hattie pushed herself to her feet and fetched the teapot to refill Allison’s cup. “Well, I don’t want to upset your mama. That’s not my place. But everybody got to have someone to talk to.” She picked up a long wooden spoon. “ ’Course, you got that Ruby, don’t you?”

Allison’s laughter faded. “I can’t talk to Ruby. She spies on me.”

Hattie, shaking her head, stirred the pot with the big spoon. “Now, that’s a shame,” she said. “If I thought Loena or Leona was doing anything like that, I’d have a word to say about it!”

By the time she left the kitchen, Allison had Hattie’s promise to make three different kinds of cookies, and to lend the electric percolator so they could make coffee for the reception. The twins came in just as she was leaving, and they glanced at her curiously, standing back to let her pass. She smiled at them. “Hello, Loena. Leona.”

They bobbed curtsies, and Leona said, “Aren’t you the clever one, miss, to be able to tell us apart!”

Allison was laughing again as she walked up the main staircase. It had been a day for laughing, and it felt good. It also felt good to walk upstairs without feeling as if she were climbing a mountain. She had felt tired and dizzy for so long she had forgotten what it was like to have energy.

Yes, it had been a day for laughing and a day for thinking. She felt better in every way than she had for months.

 

The night before the reception, the telephone in Margot’s room rang at nine o’clock. She sighed as she reached for it. It would have been nice to have an uninterrupted night’s sleep, to rise in the morning at a reasonable hour, take some care with her hair and her clothes for once. She put the earpiece to her ear and held the candlestick in her left hand. She said tiredly, “Dr. Benedict speaking.”

“Don’t sound like that,” Frank said. “It’s just me.”

“Frank!” She wriggled back against her pillows, cradling the candlestick against her chest. “What a nice surprise! I was sure you were the hospital calling.”